Body a Battlefield
by KatZen
Summary: A Tracy reflects as the scars on his body tell the story of his life so far


**Disclaimer: Nope. Not mine. Well, the story line, maybe, but the characters aren't.**

 **AN: It's been a while since I last wrote something, but I've got time and inspiration today, so why not? Not sure when I'll next be back, but hopefully sooner rather than later.**

Body a Battlefield

He has had his body for a long time, but in the recent year, he has never taken the time to truly study it. That's not to say he has never seen his body before; as a kid, he'd dream of being an Olympian, to the point where he'd pin his favourite swimming stars poster on his wall and stare longingly at his torso, willing it to morph so that it matched his idol's.

But in the past year?

Gordon had seen his torso, but he had never really looked at it.

He has to look now.

Dad's latest venture.

Dad's orders.

Dad wants them to catalogue remnants of all past injuries. Scars, pin-and-plates, dents in bone; you name it, he wants it. He heaves a sigh. There are so many injuries, he's pretty sure his body is more scar tissue than skin and flesh. A thought scores its way through his mind; _what if Dad wants you to track your scars as a way of identifying your body?_

It's morbid, but it is a possibility. To the casual observer, his body is a never ending mess of scars; they all seem to interlink and bleed into each other. To people closer to home, they can identify stories behind some of the scars, can see where some are older than others, but only he knows the truth behind each and every scar he carries. Only he can see the childhood pock marks from three bouts of chicken pox – a feat that drove his grandmother, and mother, when she was alive, up the wall. After all, it was bad luck to contract chicken pox once after being vaccinated, but almost unheard of to get it three times. His fault; his brothers had brought it home with them on three separate occasions, and even though Gordon was told to stay away from them, he didn't. He laughs slightly at the memory, hair falling into his eyes as it so often does.

 _Anything to get a day off school_.

Gordon's hands rake back the hair, and he feels the scaled skin on his scalp. It's the remnants of a peroxide burn. Way back in the day, when he was young and naïve, people in his class would tell him that he was left on the doorstep as a baby, and that his parents had taken him in because it was the right thing to do. After all, how could a red head be born to two non-red haired parents and have three older, non-red haired brothers? He had borne the brunt of comments for the better part of three years before he decided to do something about it. At as young as ten years old, he had mastered the art of pinching ten dollars from his father's wallet without being caught, and he intended to spend the money on something that would change his life. He remembered that it had been a Thursday, and on Thursdays, he had swimming practice after school, a practice he intended to blow off in favour of heading out to the shops and buying some hair dye, in the same shade as John's hair. That would dampen any comments coming from his classmates. Pleased with the plan, the ten year old version of himself had skipped on home, hair dye swinging from the carry bag in his hand. Under the pretence of having a long shower after training – something that wasn't questioned since that was what he usually did after swim practice anyway- Gordon prepared and administered the dye, placing one of the shower caps his grandmother used over his hair once he had finished. He stowed the hair dye box in the cupboard under the sink, behind all the pesky plumbing so that no one else would see what he had done and set the timer on his phone – a phone that was on so low battery it was practically comatose– so that he could rinse the dye off after the allotted time. The hair dye pack had said to leave the dye on for thirty minutes to achieve the best result, so that was what Gordon was going to do; half an hour was plenty of time in which he could start his homework. Peeking around the doorframe – living in a household as crowded as his meant that Gordon was inevitably going to bump into someone and he didn't want to do that just yet – Gordon waited until the coast was clear before scuttling off to his room. It wasn't his favourite thing to do, but once he started on his homework, Gordon would become so engrossed in it he was oblivious to anything else, including the time.

It started off as a slight tingle in his scalp; annoying, but something he could work through. The pain intensified, from a slight tingle to a fully-fledged inferno on his head. Biting back the scream that threatened to break from his lips, Gordon had run to the bathroom and shoved his head under the faucet in the bathtub. Clumps of hair gathered in his fingers as he combed it, a mess of red and bleached blonde.

 _Worst. Idea. Ever,_ he internally berated himself, whimpering as the pain became intolerable and couldn't withhold a scream that would have curdled the blood of any human being. It was a scream that was loud enough to bring his brothers barrelling into the bathroom.

Ever the leader, Scott surveyed the scene as he shoved Gordon under the shower, barking out orders to John to get some ice and call the doctor. Virgil, on the other hand, ran out of the room of his own accord, slightly squeamish at the skin that was blistering white. And Alan, useless little brother that he was, just pointed, laughed and immortalised his suffering by taking photos of him while he was in agony.

Gordon frowns at that thought, but then brightens as he remembers the aftermath of the incident; he did get a day off school - being punch-drunk on morphine has never left him completely lucid - and Alan got a rollicking from their father, their grandmother and Scott and John for not being able to have compassion for his brother while said brother had skin peeling from his skull. More importantly, he learnt to accept his body for all the quirks and limitations it has.

His hands tread lightly over his neck, the one place where his body has no stories to tell, and move down over his ribs. All his ribs have been broken, a combination of the hydrofoil accident he actively tries not to remember, the avalanche that his brain has blocked out because no knowledge means no pain, and the time he fell out of the treehouse when he was hiding from Grams after finishing off the cinnamon scrolls that was meant for her stall at the summer fair.

Down to his kidney.

 _Well,_ he muses, _not mine,_ _strictly speaking._

Gordon's not a moron (well, not all the time); he knows he's incredibly lucky, not just to be alive, but to be alive with the family he has. He knows how lucky he is to have a generous, selfless brother. It's not the kidney he was born with, but without it, he wouldn't be alive. Another remnant of his hydrofoil accident. All of his brothers are doing the same thing as him right now – cataloguing their own scars that tell their own story – and he can imagine his donor treading over the corresponding scar. Gordon recognises it as a saviour and a warning all at once; he has to be more careful in this venture, he can't keep hitting up his siblings for spare parts. Briefly, he wonders if his brother can take his kidney back if something happens to him, but that thought flies out of his head as quickly as it came in. Nothing's going to happen to him because he's going to be extra, extra careful.

Gordon's eyes skirts over his hips, down towards his legs, held together with carbon fibre rods, pins, plates and screws. More Bionic-Man than Aquaman, but it helps him walk and he wouldn't give that up for all the water in the ocean. Each rod, pin, plate and screw, he knows, has a particular serial number, just another way for his body to be identified, should the worst occur. He shakes his head again; he really has to stop being so morbid with this. There are only a few scars on his leg that aren't a souvenir of his hydrofoil accident. His fingers linger over the back of his knee.

 _Man, that baker's cyst was painful. Do not want it again!_

One of the few things that he had inherited from his mother, or so he was told; Lucille Tracy was extremely susceptible to baker's cysts too. The fact that they were both active probably had something to do with it.

A few inches lower, down to his shins – an indentation where Alan had hit him with a Tonka truck when they were little. A winter's day, where the five of them were cooped up inside the house and unable to go anywhere because Grams was sick in bed. It was a recipe for disaster. Gordon, in retaliation, threw the Tonka truck into the roaring fire, where it promptly melted into a grotesque mess of plastic, drawing wails of anguish from his little brother. It was the first time Gordon had burned something of Alan's in anger, but it definitely wasn't the last.

Gordon straightens up, marks the body map with crosses to indicate markers on his own body. By the time he finishes, his piece of paper is a multitude of crosses, and he knows that with International Rescue, the multitude will only increase exponentially. But that's a problem for another time, he reckons. Now, he wants to file this piece of paper away and jump in the pool, wiling away the time until they go live and the first rescue call comes in.


End file.
